[Mount81]

Hello!

I've also posted this on the AVS forum, but for better general recognition and to gain a wider attention -to collect as many experiences as possible- I would like to also post these in here.

So lately AMD came out with the 2200GE APU with Vega 8 IGP and with the 200GE APU with Vega 3 IGP. Both has 35W TDP and native support for HDMI 2.0a. That means UHD/HEVC/HDR/VP9 for sure (at least I would wonder if they would fall regarding these decoding features).

he questionable features would be FHD 3D MVC playback, with the usual playback software like PowerDVD and DSPlayer/MPCHC+MadVR and proper quality and stutter-free SD, 720p, 1080p to 4K upscalling.

Has anyone any relevant experiences if it works well and problem-free with these Vega IGPs? 

And what would ones general opinion here regarding if these APUs (with a not-so pricey motherboard, that has native HDMI 2.0a output) are really good deal or not for a budget all-in-one X64 HTPC?

Regarding my calculations they would come out to be much cheaper than an entry level Intel Pentium + a dedicated RX550 VGA. Also maybe more suitable for an iTX housing as no room needed for a video card. Despite that, the 35W TDP still seems a little bit high, so I guess it would definitely need good active cooling.

So would this be a good path to take HTPC wise?

This includes the questions regarding proper and cadence-perfect 4K/HDR playback, proper SDR<->HDR conversion. Also the good quality SD and 720p to 4K upscalling (some already suggested that these Vega IGPs horsepower and mostly their memory bandwidth and amount would be not enough for this with MadVR). And of course the proper 3D MVC playback. All this mainly imagined on Windows 10 platform with the most popular HTPC playback software alternatives (also mentioned above).

Experiences regarding the "original" 65WTDP 2200G and 200G and the Ryzen 5 2400G/E APU's with Vega 11 are also welcome!

You can post opinions, suggestions, and -mostly anticipated- real experiences or tests regarding the Topic (in this Thread or optionally to the AVS Thread as you wish...)

Thank you!

[Mount81]

A couple of months have passed, so I guess there may be more experiences since...

Anyone?

[cc250080]

Hi mount81,

Here my experience, I built the new HTPC a week ago. Still a few questions I need to answer to myself.

First of all, I am using a gigabyte aeros b450 pro motherboard, so it officially supports HDMI 2.0

The Good:

I can play 4K with no flickering at all, smoth experience, even h265 at 10bits

Makes me wonder:

The interface of kodi itself only allows me to choose 4K 30Hz, I wonder why not 60Hz

As I said, didn't had much time to go Deep into it.

[Mount81]

Hello cc250080!

First: What APU do you have? 

Your board surely should support 4K / 60Hz. Could be a colorspace / bitdepth mismatch. Here are the supported formats by HDMI 2.0 specifications: Link

Also could be an AMD driver or Windows settings (or update) issue as well. But if you can set 4K / 60Hz on the Windows GUI, than it's less probable.

Anyway: Rendering the KODI GUI at 4K is still very resource demanding and the common practice is to set the GUI resolution to 1080p / 60Hz. If KODI is set up properly, than it will do the necessary resolution switching during playback for 4K videos.

Have you tried HDR videos and the playback with software like MPCHC+MAdVR or DSPlayer+MAdVR (same GUI as KODI)? Could be also a KODI bug or some settings mismatch.

As long as you try to figure things out, here's a little help for setting up MadVR: Link


On a budget and need basic 4K video processing:

AMD Ryzen 3 2200G, AMD Ryzen 5 2400G, Nvidia GT 1030 2GB and Nvidia GTX 1050 2GB are all capable of playing 4K 60 fps content with madVR, but only with the most basic processing. 

Conditions:
 

• madVR is set to its default video processing settings and/or image upscaling is set to DXVA2;
  
• The CPU and GPU queue sizes remain at 8/8 or lower;
  
• 8GB of the fastest RAM you can find is run in dual-channel mode (2 x 4GB - only applies to AMD APUs);
  
• XySubFilter is not used to render subtitles;
  
• No 3D LUTs or tone mapping by pixel shaders are applied.
  

Posting any further experiences and the advancing with your HTPC config are welcome!

[casey-jones]

Nice to see something other than a Wintel processor in use. We surely don't want a one processor world (for PC's anyway).